Triton Teachers Return To Class

Tentative Contract Ends Strike

October 09, 1985|By Ray Gibson.

Classes for 25,000 students at Triton College resumed Tuesday after school officials and teachers reached a tentative agreement that ended a weeklong strike, the first in the River Grove school`s history.

Teachers voted to return to the classroom pending a formal ratification vote after a 12-hour negotiation session with a federal mediator resulted in the tentative contract early Tuesday.

Elsewhere, negotiations between striking teachers and the school board in Niles Township High School District 219 resumed in that weeklong labor dispute, which is affecting 5,000 students.

Two Niles school board members met with union leaders in a five-hour bargaining session Tuesday, and more talks were scheduled for later in the day.

The Tuesday session was the first time both sides in the dispute had met without the board`s professional negotiator or a federal mediator. Union leaders had called for the face-to-face session, saying it could lead to a quicker settlement.

Triton College and union officials said the tentative agreement calls for a 16 percent increase in the base salary over two years for the community college`s 246 teachers. The pact would increase the average salary of teachers in the district from $29,982 to $34,779 for a nine-month teaching year.

Teachers are expected to ratify the contract on Friday or Monday, and the college`s board may meet Oct. 23 or earlier for approval.

The tentative pact came after Triton officials unsuccessfully tried Monday to staff classes with part-time teachers.

``I think the administration and the governing board, after the realization set in they couldn`t break the strike, went back to the negotiation table to work out an agreement,`` said Frank Hodalski, vice president of the Triton College Faculty Association.

Though the board had tried to maintain some classes off campus, classes at the school were virtually shut down. Because of the strike, delivery of materials for the construction of a new swimming pool at the school was halted.

The faculty association, an affiliate of the Chicago Federation of Labor, had agreements before the strike with trade unions to honor the teachers`

picket lines. Hodalski said those agreements played a role in the strike`s settlement.

Hodalski said the teachers won ``credibility`` and ``dignity`` in the first strike in the school`s 20-year history. The union`s negotiators and the executive committee are recommending ratification, he said.

Richard Fonte, a Triton vice president, said the contract calls for no salary increase for teaching summer school, a provision that reduces the overall salary increase for the teachers to 13.5 percent over the two years.

The contract is retroactive to Sept. 9 and cuts one day from the school calendar, he said.

Teachers at the college had originally sought an overall increase of 19.7 percent over two years while the district had offered 11 percent.

The union`s leaders contended that college officials had spent money in the past for unneeded buildings instead of using increases in state aid to maintain salary levels at a level with other community colleges.